Tag Archives: cycles

CAROL REEVES: Forever

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Colorful leaves drift on the pond like little boats. It’s fall and they’ve given their all. Mother Earth is calling them home—only to send them forth again in the spring, sporting new finery. Nothing on earth is gone forever, only rearranged. I find comfort in knowing that is so.

A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the freedom and challenge of Flash Fiction. Her stories frequently reflect the vicissitudes and blessings of aging and can be found in Flash Fiction Magazine and 50 Word Stories. Carol’s memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published in 2022.

JUDITH DZIERBA: Fifty Words for Cicadas

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

Over a decade underground
on tree sap survival
creepy crusty shells
crawl through earth
leaving exoskeletons’
nutrients near trees.

Emerge meta-morphs,
wings as stained glass
in green tinted bodies
with falsettos in tune
to a summer’s ending.

Only weeks left above ground
attracting their mates
to lay eggs by trees.

Judith wrote this unable to ignore critters that remind her of the circle of life.

LEONIE GREGORY: Wild Summer Apples

Artistic, Submissions, , , , ,

I’m not nostalgic, but I miss that teenage feeling of unbridled freedom of summer in the country. Picking up a fallen apple, inhaling its wild lusciousness. The old farmhouse filled with young voices, the floorboards creaking under wet barefoot. And the young apple tree, planted last year, taking root beautifully.

Leonie Gregory lives in Australia; she likes taking photos of nature and writing stories about what she knows or wants to know better.

JULIAN DORES: My father started fights in bars

Submissions, , ,

My father started fights in bars. The brutalist architecture of his days was legendary.

He was proud to be blue-collar, to break things with his hands and rebuild them in his image. Oak. Rosewood. My mom. The bones in my fingers.

In our house, silence was an act of survival.

Julian Dores lives in Brussels, Belgium. He enjoys writing fiction and taking candid photographs of everyday life on the street. You can follow him @JulianDores or on his website.

TODD CRAWFORD: For Judy

Artistic, Poetry, Submissions, , , , ,

I don’t know why the starry sky
I cannot see how the river carves its way all the way to the ocean
I can only dream where songbirds go to die
I don’t know why
or how, left to its own
a salmon spawning upstream
swims hundreds of miles—home.

Todd is an amateur writer and poet. He met the love of his life in a college writing class. Since then, the two have spent their lives together.